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Secretary of the Parliamentary Labor Party. Like his father many years before, Nelson argued strongly but without
much impact that the Territory’s sole federal parliamentarian should have more than the very limited role allowed.
He was in 1959, though, successful in obtaining the right to vote on Territory matters brought before the House.
Ironically, full voting rights were granted shortly after his retirement and the Country Party’s Sam Calder had
won the Territory seat. He also pressed for an improvement in the position of the Territory’s Legislative Council,
achieving some concessions from the federal government. He was regarded as an effective local member so far as
‘parish pump’ issues were concerned and remained popular among his constituents.
He continued to be politically active following his departure from the national parliament. On 25 June 1971,
he was elected the first Mayor of Alice Springs with a very large majority. He brought a wealth of experience
to the position and was successful in persuading the federal government to provide funds for the town’s new
swimming centre. Between 1968 and 1972, he also served as Northern Territory delegate to the Labor Party’s
Federal Executive.
Nelson resigned as Mayor on 8 December 1973 to become Administrator of the Northern Territory, the first
Territorian to hold the post. ‘In this’, Donovan observed, ‘there was a certain irony because it was his father,
Harold Nelson, who had been so implacably opposed to Gilruth, the first Administrator.’ He served with distinction
in the post, especially in the difficult period following Cyclone Tracy when parts of Government House in Darwin
were badly damaged.
In November 1975, the Labor Party persuaded him to step down as Administrator to contest the Territory’s
House of Representatives electorate at the poll held in the following month. He did so only because of his ‘deep
sense of shock and outrage at the events in Canberra... in which the leader of a majority elected Government... has
his commission withdrawn.’ Most Territory voters, though, did not share his anger, with Calder soundly defeating
him. Following the election Nelson retired to Alice Springs, where he died of cancer on 20 June 1991, survived by
his wife and daughter. His funeral at the John Flynn Memorial Uniting Church in Alice Springs was well attended.
Numerous tributes were made to him at sessions of the Northern Territory and Commonwealth parliaments.
Despite the rather sad end in 1975 to his otherwise distinguished career, Nelson deserves recognition for his
continued advocacy of Territory interests over a long period. A genial personality and, unlike his father, a political
moderate, he lived long enough to see many of the policies he advocated being implemented.
P F Donovan, At the Other End of Australia, 1984, Alice Springs, 1988; A Heatley, ‘A Long Hard Road’, in Northern Perspective, vol 4, No
1, 1981; Almost Australians, 1990; A Powell, Far Country, Revised Edition, 1988; J Rydon, A Biographical Register of the Commonwealth
Parliament 1901–1972, 1975; NT Parliamentary Record, no 4, 1991.
DAVID CARMENT, Vol 2.NEMARLUK (c1911–c1942), Aboriginal bushranger, was a leading member of the group who put to death three
Japanese seamen of the lugger Ouida at Treachery Bay near the mouth of the Fitzmaurice River on 10 August 1931.
Ion Idriess wrongly claimed that this incident took place in September 1932 following a similar killing reported
at Caledon Bay on the Gulf of Carpentaria. The predilection of the Japanese crew for Aboriginal women—used in
this instance to gain the strangers’ confidence—was motive enough. By May 1932, police patrols from Timber
Creek were out in search of Nemarluk and his companions. Gradually all were arrested. Nemarluk was detained
twice. Taken to Fannie Bay Gaol near Darwin, he escaped and was later recaptured. His last days were spent at
Fannie Bay.
According to Ion Idriess the territory of Nemarluk’s people was in the Moyle River area bounded to the east
by the Daly River, to the south and west by the Victoria River, and to the north by the sea coast. Idriess identified
Nemarluk’s tribe/language group as ‘Cahnmah’, most likely the Kamor of the central Daly River described in
N B Tindale’s catalogue. Both popular writer and research scholar identified neighbouring groups such as the
Brinken and Wogait. Tindale does not give the Kamor a seacoast. However, when Nemarluk lived the Aboriginal
peoples of that region were experiencing a thoroughgoing disruption from European pressures shootings, sickness
including venereal diseases and leprosy and changes in eating habits—and individual and group movements
throughout the region were frequent.
In physical appearance Nemarluk was described as ‘a magnificent young savage ... six feet two inches tall,
broad-chested with a springy quickness of body, he was a picture of youth and strength, and of muscle and sinew in
rippling relief. He was probably more than twenty years old because Idriess’s picture is clearly that of an initiated
man with chest, shoulders and thighs deeply cicatrised, long hair tied back with a head band, and wearing a human
hair belt’. Photographs support this general description. Idriess first met him in the early 1930s; hence Nemarluk
was born probably a few years either side of 1911.
Idriess met and talked with Nemarluk ‘on more than one occasion’ at Fannie Bay Gaol. His accounts, then,
appear to be originally Nemarluk’s, but they are interpreted and heavily romanticised by Idriess in his two books
that cover Nemarluk’s story. Moreover, they cover only the last three years of Nemarluk’s life. Idriess’s Nemarluk
is a noble savage, and the books are full of other cultural stereotypes. The Aboriginal characters are alternatively
laughing, glaring, sullen, low browed, cunning. They grunt a lot. It is not a helpful basis upon which to reconstruct
something of Nemarluk’s character.
What we can learn about Nemarluk from other sources mostly treats of his resistance activities against the
whites. Such accounts are likewise filtered largely through European perceptions and practices and in this regard
some of Nemarluk’s associates receive virtually equal weight. The Western Australian press of 1932 named two
men, Monkey and Menegan, whom Idriess tells us were part of Nemarluk’s group. Mary Durack, in an article
attached to that press report, also outlined the activities of another man called Devon (Deven). These three men